Seven things that don’t work in construction marketing

The days of outbound cold calls for business-to-business marketing, thankfully, are mostly done for good.

Its bad-boy time. Here are seven things that absolutely don’t work for construction marketing.

Advertising (anything?) sold “cold” by telemarketers. If someone doesn’t know you and is calling from a general list, you can virtually be certain that the proposition isn’t worth the money. Forget it.

“Charity” support initiatives sold to you by people you don’t know. See above. Those police journal and charity circus deals provide generally most of the profits to telemarketers, not the actual cause. (If a good client calls and asks for some charitable support, the story is different.)

Anything spam. You cannot “boost your website to number one ranking on Google” by answering a spam email. Ever.

Advertising without a plan and lead-tracking-measuring system. If anyone tells you you should advertise to “build your brand,” without a process to validly measure the results, they are spewing wasteful advice.

Relying passively on repeat and referral business. Repeat and referral business is great. Not systematically and creatively developing marketing programs to enhance and improve these powerful leads is dumb.

Failing to understand value, and values. The lowest price is usually not the best strategy. If you can create value — in part by adhering to your values — you will find your clients don’t care about the price. (That means you really are delivering more than their money’s worth — just in a way where you can actually make a profit.)